Even on this occasion, when disfigured by paint, pitch, and tar, copiously daubed over his delicate person, to render him fit company for his papa old Neptune, he still looked as if his ill-favoured parents had stolen him, and were trying in vain to disguise their roguery by rigging him up in their own gipsy apparel.
It was very nearly dark when I rowed back to the Lyra, which had been hanging for the last half hour on the frigate's weather-quarter, at the distance of a cable's length, watching for my return.

The wind was so light, and the brig so close, that no signal was made to heave to; indeed I had scarcely rowed under the Alceste's stern, on my way back, before it was necessary to call out, "In bow!" The rattle of the oar on the thwarts gave the earliest notice of my approach to the people on board the little vessel, and I could hear the first lieutenant exclaim in haste, "Attend the side! Where are the sides-men ?" Scarcely had these words been spoken, when I heard a splash in the water, followed by a faint cry of distress and despair.

In the next instant the brig was hove about, and the stern-boat lowered down, accompanied by all the hurried symptoms of a man having fallen overboard.

I made the people in the boat tug at their oars towards the spot; but though we pulled over and over the ship's wake twenty times, the water was everywhere unruffled and unmarked by any speck.

At length I rowed on board, turned the hands up to muster, to ascertain who was gone, and found all present but our poor little Triton! It appeared that the lad, who was one of the sides-men, fatigued with the day's amusement, had stretched himself in the fore-part of the quarter-deck hammock-netting, and gone to sleep.